This morning at 6:00 I officially finished my new romantic comedy THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN. It’s done! The next step is getting it to my primary beta reader. She will either give me the green light, suggest changes, or tell me it sucks.

If it is the green light, then it goes to the secondary beta readers for suggestions and light proofreading and then back to me for heavy proofreading. Then I’ll turn it over to the great cover artist and e-book format professional Glendon Haddix of Streetlight Graphics and the book will be published before October.

If she suggests changes I will consider her advice and probably make changes. Then it will follow the same path as above, but probably be up to a month behind. And if she says it sucks? Well, I’ll feel really bad. Then I’ll let the manuscript sit for about six months and then go back and read it with more detachment. From there I’ll either revise (if her comments had merit) or send it to the secondary beta readers.

I started THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN on April 16, 2012. I was supposed to finish it that year. When I broke my shoulder in October I couldn’t type very well, so all my plans to write three or four books that year went down the drain. When I recovered in 2013 I tried writing two novels at once, HEAVEN and TEA WITHA DEAD GAL, one of them during the week and the other on weekends. Eventually I put DEAD GAL aside and concentrated on finishing HEAVEN. 2013 looks like it might be a one book year as well, though I have a fighting chance of getting DEAD GAL done before then.

I’ve already got plans for next year. One, a short story collection that ties the DEAD mystery characters (especially the Boo Radley dog) in with THE COWBOY’S BABY characters (especially Baby himself). Two, a shorter romance novel called THE SAFARIBRIDE that will be a departure from the light romance I’ve done so far. And then three, I’m going to see if I can salvage a story I started long, long ago that meant quite a bit to me at the time. That will be quite an interesting project.

But for now I am done! I think this one’s even better than THE COWBOY’S BABY.